Priceline Upgrades You To Reportedly Bedbug-Infested Hotel

Ordinarily, it would be a good thing if Priceline upgraded your bid for a 3.5-star hotel to a 4-star bid. This sometimes happens when a classier hotel accepts your bid. It wasn’t much of a bonus for Lissa, though. She wanted to avoid a certain 4-star hotel because user reviews in various places complained of bedbug infestations, so she bid only on 3.5-star establishments. Of course, this bid landed her at the allegedly infested hotel. It took her several hours of customer service hell to get out of the situation, which is still better than being chomped on by bedbugs.

I use Priceline all the time and hit a *new* situation today you may want to post or alert people too, or perhaps even write about. Two points are key here. 1) people that find bedbugs have to call the board of health and report it in the city where the hotel is, so the hotel can be inspected; 2.) priceline could[n’t] care less whether their hotels have bedbugs, 3) after following their protocols, it took me 2 ¬Ω hours to undo the mess they created.

I researched hotels for [a midwestern city] and found a 4 star hotel that has many reviews of problems with bedbugs. Yes, bedbugs. These reviews came from 5 travelers in the recent 3 months as well as 1 year ago, so it’s an ongoing problem for the hotel. I saw the hotel listed on Priceline and via their chat advised them that this hotel [redacted] had received recent traveler reviews of bedbug infestation and problems. I wanted to let them know to re-check their hotels since it reflects on them, as well as to be sure I didn’t get stuck in a bedbug hotel.

As a result, I put in a bid for a 3 ¬Ω star hotel to avoid that 4-star hotel. I selected this rating and the area I wanted to be sure I didn’t get near bedbugs. However, Priceline gave me a courtesy upgrade to a 4 star hotel and gave me that same hotel I tried to avoid. They can and do upgrade if a higher level hotel will take your bid. Here, it isn’t what I wanted or authorized, and specifically tried to avoid.

I called right away and spent 2+ hours jumping hoops to undo the transaction because I had not authorized a 4 star hotel, and they upgraded me to my detriment. I had to call 3x as every time I had to wait, explain again what happened, be transferred to one then another person, who timely dropped my call. I spoke to [redacted].

With rampant bedbugs in major cities, travelers need to notify the Board of Health if they experience that at a hotel. The [redacted] board had no complaints listed for the hotel, but reviews all over the web in the recent 6 months spoke to serious bedbug problems.

Perhaps you can alert your forums to have people follow up with health departments and protect all of us. It’s a big deal if you bring the critters home, let alone the expense of eradication.

Also, Priceline claimed they would “investigate” my research and would call the hotel to see if they had bedbugs. It was the most ridiculous ‘investigation’ I ever saw, and I am thoroughly disgusted with priceline that they have hotels with bedbugs available to unsuspecting travelers. I offered to email or fax all the reviews I collected that said there were bedbugs. They thought it was more reliable to just ask the hotel if they had bugs. Talk about the wolf guarding the sheep. Like, what did they think the hotel would tell them. a certai I’d like to put the pressure on priceline to treat their customers better too. It killed my day arguing it out with them. they wouldn’t even look at my research.

They should have thanked me for letting them know about it, but instead I fought all day, when they were the ones that changed my hotel ratings selection on me!